Forte - Season Finale

In 1897, the disastrous première of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony threw his promising career as a composer into disarray. For three agonizing years, he was unable to create anything significant. He found relief with the help of Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a psychoanalyst. “The material for a new concerto accumulated, and new musical ideas began to stir within me,” he wrote. “By autumn I had completed two movements (the second and third)….These I played tha...